Solace in the arms of a man or at the bottom of an expensive bottle of wine – the traditions of the successful circles she frequented – were not for her. She needed the ordinariness of life to restore order. Dressed in black lounge clothes, a cashmere blanket waiting for her on the couch and the vegan take-out on speed dial, she let the normality of the evening seep in. The dulcet tones of Reza Aslan came on, as Metaphysical Milkshake asked its listeners, ‘Why are we so lonely?’ The room was warm; the soft scent of Jo Malone filled the air. Candles were dripping on to the windowsill, rivers of wax pooling from one to the other and setting to form islands. Their light was the only kind she could tolerate at the start of a migraine.

Her friend’s Pakistani grandmother who’d visited had asked, ‘Yahan kya bijli bahut jaatee hai?’ They’d laughed at the suggestion that electrical companies might cut the power to London homes. It was a regular occurrence in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, done to avoid placing an excessive load on the generating plant, but here among the tenants of Jia’s Knightsbridge apartment building, it would have caused uproar.

A mobile phone began to hum persistently somewhere in another room. Jia left the comfort of her couch in search of it. It was rare for her to receive calls this late.

She stepped across the scattered clothes in her bedroom and moved towards the bed. She had undressed quickly, not caring where things landed. The maid would pick them up and hang them and send them to the dry cleaners in the morning. Cheeks to the carpet, the red soles of her work shoes chastised her. A skirt lay in a heap next to the kingsize bed, along with a soft silk blouse. Its mate, the Savile Row jacket, was neatly placed on top of the covers; beside it sat a pebble-coloured Birkin handbag. It was vibrating. It was fair to say that Jia Khan was a gently vain woman.

The phone stopped ringing as soon as she found it. ‘Baba jaan’ flashed up on the missed call log. She was about to put it down when it rang again. He knew she was avoiding him. ‘Jia Khan never whines,’ she’d overheard him saying to her mother once, ‘she protests in silence.’ He was goading her to hit ‘decline’, and so she did. A minute later the phone buzzed, signalling he’d left a voicemail.